This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

“Virtually irreplaceable” is the phrase Councillor Shelley Carroll uses to describe Rita Davies, whose 13-year-reign as queen of culture for the city of Toronto ended last week when she left city hall with disconcerting abruptness.

It’s no doubt true it would be hard to imagine finding anyone with the vision, intelligence and leadership qualities of Davies to take over as the city’s executive director of culture.

But there’s a much scarier scenario. What if Mayor Rob Ford and his culture-phobic allies would really prefer not to replace Davies, but to eliminate her position and decimate her staff?

Ever since Ford took office, Davies has proved to be an inconvenient obstacle to the mayor’s attempts to slash culture grants, let the private sector worry about the arts, and get back to his mission of cutting costs, fixing potholes and freezing taxes.

City council bought into her vision, passing her long-range culture plan and maintaining and protecting arts funding.

Article Continued Below

So even if the Ford brothers couldn’t recognize Margaret Atwood and Mary Walsh, they sure knew who Rita Davies was — and to put it mildly, it would hardly be a surprise if Ford did not beg her to stay on as long as possible.

Luckily, that ill-advised goal can’t be easily accomplished, since council keeps voting in favour of arts funding.

But the influence of the cultural world on city politics will be greatly diminished without the driving force of Davies in a position of power and influence.

Unlike Rob Ford, former mayor David Miller understood how lucky Toronto was to have Davies. “One of Toronto’s greatest attractions is its vibrant arts and culture life,” he told me a few years ago. “Rita is the key force behind it. She is a wonderful public asset.”

Until now, the city’s arts world has taken for granted the advances championed by Davies. She’s the one who developed targets through a long-term Creative City plan, adopted by council. She’s the one who made the case for increasing arts funding so Toronto could compete with other cities, even if the city was cash-strapped.

Davies was instrumental in giving Toronto Nuit Blanche, saving small city museums, using the arts to inspire teens in troubled neighbourhoods, and proposing a new museum about the history of the city.

To the extent that Toronto has managed to become one of the world’s creative capitals, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Davies. She has shown an unyielding determination to earn respect and recognition for Toronto’s artists and cultural workers.

Elsewhere in the world, other cities are catching up with the gospel Davies has been preaching for years.

Major U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago, all understand the importance of culture to their growth and prosperity, and many of them have a powerful person called the city’s cultural commissioner, who has the backing of the mayor and serves as a kind of ambassador.

Like Toronto, Chicago has a relatively new mayor, Rahm Emanuel. But unlike Toronto’s mayor, Emanuel has embraced arts and culture as the key to Chicago’s future. And at the moment Chicago is showing huge enthusiasm for a long-term culture plan, making the arts more central to daily life for all citizens. The plan was drafted by the Toronto-based firm Lord Cultural Resources.

Davies has long been a genuine star in the world of arts workers, politics and civic planning — not just in Toronto but among her peers all over the world.

To make a city more creative, it takes a passionate advocate with a strong personality to lead the way.

“Creating and executing a culture plan is akin to piloting the Titanic,” Davies once told me. “It’s exhilarating but you never know when you’re going to run into an iceberg.”

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com